


A Study in Maltheism

by Callmesalticidae, shadow_wasserson



Series: The Gods Have Horns [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, First Meetings, Gen, Godstuck, Rose is a precocious eleven-year-old, not even this school can quite handle her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-07 01:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3155798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmesalticidae/pseuds/Callmesalticidae, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_wasserson/pseuds/shadow_wasserson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Rose Lalonde, you are a student at a religious boarding school, and you are currently in detention for daring to criticize the gods. </p><p>Maybe, if you're lucky, they'll actually expel you this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Maltheism

**Author's Note:**

> Edits were made to Eridan's dialogue on 3/14/2015. No information content, just stylistic stuff.

 

 

 

> Atheos: Greek. Meaning “Rejecting the gods, rejected by the gods, godforsaken.” From which we derive the modern “atheist.”
> 
> * * *
> 
> “This world could not have been the work of all-loving beings, but that of devils, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.” Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher and heretic.

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you are the most-hated student to ever blight the halls of Our Lady Who Is Without Mother or Father Academy for Girls— or Our Lady Without, for a title that’s less of a mouthful. You can safely say that you spend the majority of your time here in the engaging study of just what it is that you have to do before they have no choice but to expel you.

As of yet all of your efforts have been fruitless. Your damn— blasted, your _blasted_ mother is far too influential of a figure for anyone here at the school to want to cross her. She is an alumnus of the school herself, an orphan girl who went on to take her higher education at the Canon Order of She Who Measures, and now she is a company lawyer for SkaiaNet Laboratories, which everybody knows— but nobody says— carries out research for the gods.

She is, for all intents and purposes, untouchable, and she has made it clear on other occasions that she intends for you to finish out your education here no matter what you do. Should you burn the whole campus down you would no doubt spend the rest of your childhood in some solitary schoolfeeding cell, but you would still get your education. Much to your mutual disappointment, yours and the superintendent’s, who was actually in the process of slipping you a box of matches before your mother caught the action and told you both that it would be no good

You hate each other, but common goals have a way of making allies out of the blackest enemies. Not that you’re actually _black_ for her, of course. Even if you were so bles— _affected_ by the gods, you’re sure that you wouldn’t be directing black feelings in her direction. Or anyone’s, really. You think that you might deny yourself a kismesis just to spite the gods.

That kind of attitude is exactly why you’re in detention, of course. You wrote an admittedly scathing, if well-constructed and thoroughly-argued, essay that couldn’t have been more scandalous had it been titled _Ninety-Five Proofs that the Teachers Are Engaging in Lewd Acts with the Students, with Details of Their Exact Activities_ and you nailed it to somebody’s door.

Actually, now that you think about it that doesn’t sound half-bad for Round Two, and you get out your pen and paper to begin drafting an outline when there is a knock on the door. You ignore it, more interested in your burgeoning next project— you’ll have to make some adaptations to account for the switched sexes, but you think that you’ll be able to draw on some material from your last work,  _The Circle of the Sword_ , whose sleaziness was matched only by its blasphemousness. An all-boys school, and one for wizards, but you can fix those details. It helps that you were inspired by some of your peers at Our Lady Without to begin with.

You are interrupted from your thoughts by the sound of the door opening, but it takes another moment for you realize that your visitor’s footsteps don’t sound like the superintendent’s, your mother’s, or any of your teachers’. Curious, you look up to see who it is, and the pen drops from your hand.

You are so, _so_ dead.

You aren’t surprised to see him in a more casual dress. You know from your mother that most of them hate formal and ritual attire. Instead he is dressed in the most ridiculous and ostentatious get-up that your eyes have ever suffered to behold. You know for a fact that he doesn’t need those glasses, much less a slightly-cracked set, and his yellow-and-white scarf is almost longer than he is. Emblazoned on his purple shirt is the Aspect of three sets of stylized, wind-like wings, the symbol of his divinity.

You haven’t seen him before in person— you only had to be dragged once to your mother’s company meetings, and there were few gods there— but you still don’t need to think about it to realize who’s standing in front of you. Despite your best efforts the school’s theology lessons and your mother’s own drunken rants and recollections have sunk deep into your mind, and his names and titles start spilling into your awareness almost by reflex. The Stormcrow, Who is the Evening and the Morning, Thrice-formed _Eridan Ampora_.

And though your lizard brain wants to run for the hills, you manage to stay calm. You compose your face. You quiet your mind, as you learned to do in morning meditation. If you mess this up you won’t get a second chance. There’s a reason they call this one the Wrathful.

“Hello, my Prince of Hope. To what do I owe this honor?”

He scoffs in your face. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Rose Lalonde. That’s not you at all.”

And you feel the blood drain out of your face, because you just noticed what he’s holding. It's a stapled sheaf of paper, and it has your name, signed in your distinctive loops, across the top.

“I read your paper. I liked it,” he says. "Every last word.” And then he flips through the pages and begins to read from one of them. “As was well-said by John K. Roth, ‘Everythin' hinges on the proposition that the gods possess— but fail to use well enough— the power to intervene decisively at any moment to make history’s course less wasteful. Thus, in spite and because of their sovereignty, these gods are everlastingly guilty and the degrees run from gross negligence to mass murder.”

He smiles, and you want to run away. Maybe... maybe if you throw something, if you distract him, you might be able to get past him. Run away, change your name, never think too hard when the gods are present in your mind… They’re not omniscient. You could do it.

But all your plans fall apart and you can only sit in horror as he continues to read. “The gods, those Supreme Fascists, as Paul Erdős called them, are nothin' more than despots and liars. They are powerful, but Euthyphro demonstrated that power alone does not a god make. They made the universe, but like a clockwork device it now runs on its own, and by their own admission it would continue to function without their interference. They are landlords who charge too much rent, they are authors who don’t know that they should step back and let their work speak for itself. They are not inherently good, as anyone can realize after thirty seconds of meditation on the Dark Carnivale, and they are not worth worshipin'.”

Dam— curs— shit. The gods don’t make a habit of killing heretics, but… Sometimes there _are_ deaths. Sometimes they make exceptions to their unspoken rule.

You swallow, and start looking again for a way to distract Eridan.

“Relax,” he says, but you barely register the sounds. “I said to fuckin' relax,” he says again, and you freeze. You’ve never heard a god use Tinge before, but you understand it now, how deeply it cuts to your core. It is like nothing you have ever experienced, and all of a sudden you could not deny, even if you wanted to, that what is talking to you possesses a wholly different nature than your own. “Much better, Rose. Your mom raised you wwell.”

You are such a mess. You would have liked to have at least died with dignity, but no. You turn away, panting.

“You seem to be missin' the part where I said that I _liked_ this.”

“You are as c-capable of sarcasm as the rest of us,” you reply.

“You’re thinkin' a' Sollux, honey. I guess I can dally in it once in a while too, but I don’t deal in lies. You know that. I particularly liked the part where you deconstructed Richard Dawkins, by the way. Sometimes I wish we could pick our theologians, but we try not to interfere that much.”

“Then what d-do you want with me?”

“I want to take you under my thrice-formed wings,” Eridan says. You tremble as he presses a clawed finger against your forehead, but all that he does is move a few hairs out of the way. His claw then runs down your cheek, coming to rest beneath your chin. He presses up, nudging you up to meet him eye to eye. “You’re a very special girl, Rose. I don’t make a big deal out of it, but people like you are my soldiers. There’s more to this game than you know, but you and I, our job is the same— we tell the gods when they’re fuckin' up.”

“So… I’m not going to die?”

He smiles and shakes his head. “I’ll bet you’re tired a' this school. Am I right?” You nod vigorously, and he continues. “I can teach you more than these schoolmarms ever dreamed of, if you want.”

“You want me to be a disciple. Like my _mother_.”

“Consider it a partnership, more. Even the scientists and the teachers, they look up to me.” His hands grab you by the shoulders and pull you up as he leans over. “But I want somebody to look _at_ me. Keep _me_ honest, as I do for the other gods. I’ll teach you everythin' I know, just as fast as you can take it in, and in return you promise to speak your mind about it all.”

Eridan lets you go, and at once you fall back into your seat. You hadn’t realized how much he had been supporting you in that moment.

“Just consider it,” he says, and then he leaves you to your thoughts. 


End file.
